Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks & Zarin of Springfield, NJ, will acquire Sinins and Bross of Newark, NJ, and be renamed as Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins. These two personal injury, medical-malpractice firms are joining forces to form a more competitive 15-lawyer firm. The merger gives Javerbaum the ideal Newark location, as some of their clients didn’t like traveling to Springfield; for Sinins, the merger provides some much needed man-power to the shrinking firm. Javerbaum has been growing over the past year, and is looking to expand further. Last summer, they took over the Freehold, NJ, practice of personal injury practitioner Paul Newell, and around the same time, they acquired a satellite office in Harrison: the workers’ compensation practice of former associate John Pinho.
Source: www.nylawyer.com

Plaintiffs firm Seeger Weiss has opened a Philadelphia office with three class action attorneys from Philadelphia plaintiffs firm Sheller P.C. Jonathan Shub will be resident partner of the Philadelphia office along with two associates, TerriAnne Benedetto and Scott Alan George. Shub’s decision to move was due to a change in Sheller’s class action focus; his work focuses primarily on consumer class actions, but he also has a subspecialty in computer-defect cases. Seeger Weiss has offices in New York City, Newark, NJ, and Tulsa, OK; though the firm was not looking to open in Philly, the decision was easy when the opportunity arose. Already some of the firm’s lawyers spend time there, and it is one of few U.S. cities prominent in class action work.
Source: www.law.com

Epstein, Becker & Green has recruited seven real estate lawyers from the New York office of Roseland, N.J.’s Lowenstein Sandler. Adrian Zuckerman, the former head of Lowenstein Sandler’s New York real estate practice and a former deputy general counsel of real estate management company Helmsley Spear Inc., heads the group. He also will become co-head of Epstein Becker’s national real estate practice. Ralph Berman and Linda Bielik are also joining Epstein Becker as partners while Brian L. Ullman, Andrew R. Tulloch and Steven M. Ziolkowski will become counsels. One associate is also joining the firm. Epstein Becker has 380 attorneys in 11 offices throughout the country.
Source: www.law.com

January’s pay raises increased first year associate pay essentially across the board for large firms. Despite the pay increases, smaller intellectual property specialty firms are still managing to compete in the salary race. For example, New York’s 70-lawyer IP firm Frommer Lawrence & Haug has been paying its first-year associates $150,000 since July, when most large national general practice firms were still paying their first years $135,000. Chicago’s McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff also pays above the market rate for associates, raising its first year annual salary to $145,000 in early 2006, and raising it again this January to $150,000. The two largest IP firms, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner and Fish & Richardson have actually not only matched New York rates, but they have also made those rates effective nationwide. IP firms have always been ahead of the curve in terms of compensation because of their strong and steady income and low overhead pay.
Source: www.law.com